Here is a little trick that I have seen some use here. They try to find some strange or unusual belief that some Christians have and then try to judge all Christians by that standard.

A case in point...

Some here claim that Christians believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old. And I suppose it's true that a small percentage believe that. But there is nothing in the Bible that says the Earth is 6,000 years old. In fact, the Bible does not deal with the age of the Earth.

Now, I don't know about anyone else, but I study the Scriptures, and not what religious leaders such as Pat Robertson have to say. I follow Jesus Christ that is represented in the NT. Not what any religion may or may not believe.

As I have already stated in my thread The Largest Religion Today, Christianity is the largest religion in the world today. There are thousands of Christian sects that each follow their own beliefs.

Looking through some of them and finding strange or unusual beliefs is not very hard. Not is it very accurate.

If you feel you must criticize someone else's religion, such as Christianity, at least try to be accurate about it.

BigD9832...I have found that *shockingly FEW* have actually read the Bible cover-to-cover...they just rely on what their "daddy/ the preacher" tells them.

Sad...so sad..

I have had discussions with supposedly devout Christians who are surprised some of the things they belive/ heard are not true/ not even *in* the Bible...

See also:
The supposed Christian people who marginalize those less fortunate/ the disadvantaged, and poor shame..when Jesus was all about ministering to the poor and marginalized..and had a lot of derogatroy things to say about rich people and those who wouldn't help others.

I dunno what Jesus *they* follow...but it ain't the same one *I* know...

I find that religion is like everything else.
Subject to Interpretation.

We all live lives full of delusions.
Many moral codes are built on delusions and lies.
Its how we deal with the reality of existing.
Our delusions give us comfort.

Nature will kill you if it gets a chance.
Life is delicate and can end very easily.
We exist in a 'world' of our own making to allow us to find comfort in the restrictions of reality to preserve our lives.

Some find comfort in scripture.
Some find comfort in mathematics.
Some find comfort in acknowledgement.
Some find comfort in council.

When it all comes down to the bottom line, its always you that looks out thru your eyes.
It doesn't matter where or how you find inner peace to deal with cold reality.
It only matters that you do.

Oh lord, not the scriptures again. I find some people quite obsessive about them, and swell with pride as they spout them out at every available oppertunity. But you seem like a nice chap. I'm curious, I confess I haven't really read much scripture, I sometimes find divinity in verse and song, sometimes these are a key. But I've often heard of the dead sea scrolls, can you tell me any thing interesting about them. I'm going to post a link to a song, I like, with good lyrics that I feel is relevant. If your American you probably haven't heard it. I'd like to know your thoughts about it

https://youtu.be/8f8wAXDZ9D0

I posted (among other subjects) a point of the unreliability of radio carbon dating a number of months ago. The originator of c14 was a Martin D. Kamen (Chicago chemist). Among what he established was that c14 equilibrium within earths atmosphere should have taken place after 30,000 years. I.E. no higher levels of c14 should be measurable because he believed in evolution.

The dichotomy is that throughout the 1950's his documentation shows that the earths levels of c14 are increasing between 12% to 20% per year. He never offered an explanation for this. According to carbon 14 theory if c14 is increasing earth hasn't reached equilibrium yet which (according to scientific theory) the earth is less than 30,000 years.
With an unbiased viewing of the real facts evolution always comes up short. Scientists always explain away these anomalies as "non-conformities" and move on. Obviously they don't want to accept the alternative.

Radio carbon dating isn't used to determine the age of the Earth.

C14 is not the only element used in radiometric dating.
Uranium–lead radiometric dating involves using uranium-235 or uranium-238 to date a substance's absolute age.

Samarium–neodymium dating involves the alpha decay of 147Sm to 143Nd with a half-life of 1.06 x 10^11 years.

Potassium–argon dating involves electron capture or positron decay of potassium-40 to argon-40.

Rubidium–strontium dating is based on the beta decay of rubidium-87 to strontium-87, with a half-life of 50 billion years.

Uranium–thorium dating is a relatively short-range dating technique is based on the decay of uranium-234 into thorium-230, a substance with a half-life of about 80,000 years.

A carbon-based life form acquires carbon during its lifetime. Plants acquire it through photosynthesis, and animals acquire it from consumption of plants and other animals. When an organism dies, it ceases to take in new carbon-14, and the existing isotope decays with a characteristic half-life (5730 years). The proportion of carbon-14 left when the remains of the organism are examined provides an indication of the time elapsed since its death. This makes carbon-14 an ideal dating method to date the age of bones or the remains of an organism. The carbon-14 dating limit lies around 58,000 to 62,000 years.

Fission track dating involves inspection of a polished slice of a material to determine the density of "track" markings left in it by the spontaneous fission of uranium-238 impurities.

Luminescence dating methods are not radiometric dating methods in that they do not rely on abundances of isotopes to calculate age. Instead, they are a consequence of background radiation on certain minerals.

Other methods include:

argon–argon (Ar–Ar)
iodine–xenon (I–Xe)
lanthanum–barium (La–Ba)
lead–lead (Pb–Pb)
lutetium–hafnium (Lu–Hf)
potassium–calcium (K–Ca)
rhenium–osmium (Re–Os)
uranium–lead–helium (U–Pb–He)
uranium–uranium (U–U)
krypton–krypton (Kr–Kr)
beryllium (10Be–9Be)

Source: wiki

Evolution neither proves or disproves the existence of God.
Evolution happens after life is generated.
It happens constantly to all life forms.
People often get mixed up thinking they're arguing evolution when they are really arguing spontaneous generation vs Immaculate generation.

The importance of time to the evolutionary process is in determining how much change an organism goes thru from its initial generation to its current generation.

The original argument that is still being used today is the geological column.

William Smith first used the similarity of fossils to construct detailed geologic maps across wide areas. He used fossils to map and correlate rock layers and constructed the first geologic map of England and Wales in 1815.

By 1885 the finer divisions of the column had been identified based on the principles established by Steno, Smith, and Lyell. These ideas were also beginning to impact the study of biology, and Lyell’s long-age ideas played a major role in Darwin’s development of the theory of biological evolution over vast geologic eras.

It was "assumed" that by identifying the order of fossil succession, the layers could be correlated from one region to the next. Index fossils are still one of the major indicators of the age of a given layer. Shelled creatures such as ammonites and mollusks are the most commonly used index fossils.

Another problem with index fossils is that, rather than being proof of evolution, evolution was already assumed to have occurred. The changes in features in index fossils of different periods are assumed to be caused by evolution, and the presence of different organisms in different periods is then used to support biological evolution. This is a case of using an assumption to prove the assumption is true—circular reasoning by any measure.

Misconception: The strata systems of the geologic column are worldwide in their occurrence with each strata system being present below any point on the earth's surface.
The notion that the earth's crust has on "onion skin" structure with successive layers containing all strata systems distributed on a global scale is not according to the facts. Data from continents and ocean basins show that the ten geologic column systems are poorly represented on a global scale.

Misconception: Tectonic plate shift caused mixing of geologic column levels
If tectonic plates pressed together (quickly or slowly) the massive rock movement would grind any fossil into dust. Instead of finding a mixing of geologic column levels a complete loss of the fossil record would result.

Misconception: The geologic column and the positions of fossils within the geologic column provide proof of amoeba-to-man evolution. Nowhere on earth has a "missing Link" between lower forms and more developed forms ever been found. If inter-developmental species missing links) existed the earth should be over run with them. For almost 200 years those who believe in evolution have searched for missing link existence. They should be as plentiful as the fossils we, so often, find.

All long term dating methods have drawbacks not publisized.

Potassium dating example:
As much as 80% of the potassium in a small sample of iron meteorite can be removed by distilled water in 4.5 hours.

Always like your input Dave .
Always.

How can you interpret what you have never read?

Use a text to speech app.

This is very interesting, thanx.

There are a few known things I would like to point out and a few of my own thoughts on geological evolution.

In no order to your comment...

There is evidence and observation that proves tectonic plate movement occurs.
GPS monitoring shows movement (about the same rate of movement that fingernails grow).
Geological events occur at points described thru tectonic plate movement.
Subduction zones and lift zones produce mountain rise, volcanoes and earthquakes.
We have mapped out subduction and lift zones and monitor their movement.
Tectonic plates do not equally move as units.
The unequal movement in some plates cause different fossil columns at different parts of a single plate.
That is how rocks dated to 3.8 billion years can still be at the surface on some plates.
This is because the plates shift as a whole while also subducting and rising.
Thus, we have past and future super-continent formations.

If you look at the tree of life representation, evolution does not occur equally either. There are branches that separate the taxonomy.
Homo sapiens did not evolve directly from amoeba. Amoeba evolved from their own taxonomy branch.
The root of life on this planet is not even aerobic.
Life started out as anaerobic and mutated when iron started to rust.
Iron started to rust because the anaerobic life which dominated the planet exhaled oxygen.
As the atmosphere gained more oxygen the anaerobic life started to mutate to aerobic (breathing oxygen). Some chose to bury itself under the surface to escape the oxygen. This is why there are still anaerobic lifeforms present today. For one easy example, look at the lifeforms that dominate black smokers.

A final consideration worth mentioning is that people have only been looking at the fossil record for a rather short period of time and only at the fossil record that still exists.
Life on this planet is 3.8 billion years in the making.
We haven't discovered many species that existed that just didn't fossilize. The "missing link" could be missing for any number of reasons of which 'never existed' is but one.
There may be millions of 'missing' links that can never be found because no fossil evidence occurred. Fossilization doesn't occur with every organism at all times.
The "link's" evolutionary mutation might have occurred in too few of generations for it to be distinguishable.
Evolutionary mutation that occurs in a few 10s of millions of years is insignificant to 3.8 billion years. Hell, humans are barely 2 million years old and we have evolved since then, and are still evolving.
Every human being in the last 2 million years is not preserved as a fossil.

The limitations of dating methods are publicized but are not well-known.
Scientist that know the limitations of specific dating methods also know there are other dating methods that fit the expected time frame of what they are dating.

Knowing half-life expectancy and which elements have specific half-life times, they look for specific elements and measure the decay rate of that element compared to its known half-life.

They log the decay of each known element and use all the data to determine a date range.

If they find that all the uranium–thorium is completely decayed, they know the sample is at least 80,000 years old.
The carbon-14 dating limit lies around 58,000 to 62,000 years.
So, if all the C14 is decayed but there is still uranium–thorium in the sample, that sample is dated to between 62,000 to 80,000 years.

If C14 is still present, they can measure the "amount of decay" to determine an 'approximate age' less than 58,000 to 62,000 years.
So, using C14 to determine that a sample is around 5-7,000 years old is understood as accurate in a "range". At that time, they then look for 'other' dating methods to try to narrow down the range.

As our understanding of half-life and decay rates improves, our ability to find more precise date ranges increases.

??????

*I* have read the Bible from cover to cover.
These people apparently have never opened one and read any of it themselves.

And...Some of these people have and decided to reject the delusions.

What delusions?

The delusions of Phony/False Christianity and how the Bible is interpreted to apply to our daily lives.

Ok. Thanks for your response Tom.
The Word of God is not for private interpretation.